mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Aww, poor thing! You're a good soul, Merc.
Something Random
- Thread starter ddrueding
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
She likes to climb and she's made herself a little nest on top of my fridge. RIP my Flour Jar. She's also claimed my ENTIRE couch. The other three cats are holding the line at keeping her out of my bedroom though.
She doesn't sit still very much, so I've had a hell of a time getting a decent picture of her.
She doesn't sit still very much, so I've had a hell of a time getting a decent picture of her.
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Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
This is EXTREMELY out of left field, but it's fascinating to me, a long form interview with minimalist composer Steve Reich, about his well known (for people who like late 20th century classical music, anyway) piece Different Trains. It's from a podcast called Song Exploder, which most often spends around 40 minutes examining a single three minute song. Song Exploder is something my partner really likes. Y'all might like it as well.
ddrueding
Fixture
Song Exploder is great. It has also been very helpful in getting friends more into music by understanding the production side.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
If you were at all worried if the RAM crisis is a real thing or not, I just traded a G. Skill 2x32GB DDR5-6400 kit that I think I paid about $150 for a year ago for an Asus TUF RTX5070 Ti.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
It's been announced a new Trump Tower will be built in Australia on the Gold Coast, and will be the tallest building in Australia. (well not quite, another building which has also just been approved will be taller, which itself will be located just a few kilometres from this proposed Trump Tower).
Partitions and campaigns have already started to halt/stop the approval process for this property development. The local council and state authorities have both denied that the development applications have been submitted at this stage, so this seems more like a concept of a plan, than something that has actually been approved by the relevant authorities.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...d-coast-says-developer/106376738?future=true&
Partitions and campaigns have already started to halt/stop the approval process for this property development. The local council and state authorities have both denied that the development applications have been submitted at this stage, so this seems more like a concept of a plan, than something that has actually been approved by the relevant authorities.
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...d-coast-says-developer/106376738?future=true&
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's pretty easy to get heavily discounted rate at Trump Tower Chicago. I've been known to use rooms there for affordable (sub-$100) photo shoots . Normally I hate working in hotel rooms but it's a very tall building with great views on every side, so sometimes it works for me.
Eventually, the building will get sold to someone else. It's just a building, and it's not like anyone else who owns skyscrapers is some kind of paragon of virtue.
I found this Youtube video about the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, which happens every year around Mother's Day weekend. Scav is absolute insanity, because the teams are full of extremely talented, driven people who will make things happen to complete the list, up to and including construction of a working breeder reactor.
Eventually, the building will get sold to someone else. It's just a building, and it's not like anyone else who owns skyscrapers is some kind of paragon of virtue.
I found this Youtube video about the University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt, which happens every year around Mother's Day weekend. Scav is absolute insanity, because the teams are full of extremely talented, driven people who will make things happen to complete the list, up to and including construction of a working breeder reactor.
Gödel
Storage is especially nice if it doesn't rotate
An Ugly Building in a Beautiful City Gets a Much-Debated Makeover.The Tour Montparnasse is one of Paris’s least-loved landmarks. After half a century, it’s finally being remodeled.
It's Paris' only skyscraper, and I loved the joke that the best view in Paris is from the observation deck on the tower’s 56th floor because that’s only place where one can’t see it.
ddrueding
Fixture
I was there a couple years ago, and it did feel very dated. The views from the top are quite good.
sedrosken
Florida Man
I put in a lowball on what was obviously a little SFF barebones PC kit from the turn of the millennium -- the plastic peel for the badge on the front was still present, despite some scratches in the powdercoating on the metal indicating it'd seen a little bit of careless handling -- and apparently I got it.
It's using an MS-6315 motherboard labelled on The Retro Web as being of the LPX form factor. I've seen a handful of LPX machines and this doesn't look precisely like any of them, but maybe this is a lesser-known standard intended for SFF desktops, I don't know. It uses an 815E chipset -- with 4 megs of soldered DisplayCache onboard, luxurious -- and surprisingly nice baked-in Intel LAN. In this class of machine, one expects to see Realtek if there's any LAN at all. It's got typical (for that time) AC'97 audio, nothing special but it'd have gotten the job done for a business machine as this is clearly looking to be.
It comes to me with a Mendocino Celeron at 466MHz and 256MB of RAM. It seems like the seller just left what he used to test it in there. I've got a PIII-866 sitting on a shelf that'd be fine for it, and a kit for 512MB if I really feel like pushing the envelope later on and shoehorning XP onto there for grits and shins. I also have a mislabelled ESS Solo-1 card coming from eBay to make this actually a surprisingly competent DOS rig -- supposedly, we'll see -- and I've hedged my bets with the 815 video with a pair of PCI video cards. This has two full-size PCI slots, and I don't even have to burn one on a NIC. Wonders never cease.
I managed to find a deal on a PCI nVidia card (a rarity in the year of our lord 2026, I assure you) but supposedly it's going to be a 32-bit bus variant of the GPU, a GeForce4 MX4000, so it's barely going to be any better than the 815 video, I'm told. In case that ends up being a bad time, I've also got a Radeon 9250 coming for it from a friend who had a pair, an even trade for my Vortex2 card that's apparently sought after for some reason (I don't like it very much). I'm already very aware of the limitations of PCI video, so my expectations are fairly low -- about the level of Warcraft III is where I'm done pushing it. Anything later that'll run decently, cool -- anything that won't, fair enough. I've seen Vice City and UT2004 run surprisingly well on some surprisingly awful hardware, so I have hopes, but I know this will definitely have some pretty stark limits.
It's using an MS-6315 motherboard labelled on The Retro Web as being of the LPX form factor. I've seen a handful of LPX machines and this doesn't look precisely like any of them, but maybe this is a lesser-known standard intended for SFF desktops, I don't know. It uses an 815E chipset -- with 4 megs of soldered DisplayCache onboard, luxurious -- and surprisingly nice baked-in Intel LAN. In this class of machine, one expects to see Realtek if there's any LAN at all. It's got typical (for that time) AC'97 audio, nothing special but it'd have gotten the job done for a business machine as this is clearly looking to be.
It comes to me with a Mendocino Celeron at 466MHz and 256MB of RAM. It seems like the seller just left what he used to test it in there. I've got a PIII-866 sitting on a shelf that'd be fine for it, and a kit for 512MB if I really feel like pushing the envelope later on and shoehorning XP onto there for grits and shins. I also have a mislabelled ESS Solo-1 card coming from eBay to make this actually a surprisingly competent DOS rig -- supposedly, we'll see -- and I've hedged my bets with the 815 video with a pair of PCI video cards. This has two full-size PCI slots, and I don't even have to burn one on a NIC. Wonders never cease.
I managed to find a deal on a PCI nVidia card (a rarity in the year of our lord 2026, I assure you) but supposedly it's going to be a 32-bit bus variant of the GPU, a GeForce4 MX4000, so it's barely going to be any better than the 815 video, I'm told. In case that ends up being a bad time, I've also got a Radeon 9250 coming for it from a friend who had a pair, an even trade for my Vortex2 card that's apparently sought after for some reason (I don't like it very much). I'm already very aware of the limitations of PCI video, so my expectations are fairly low -- about the level of Warcraft III is where I'm done pushing it. Anything later that'll run decently, cool -- anything that won't, fair enough. I've seen Vice City and UT2004 run surprisingly well on some surprisingly awful hardware, so I have hopes, but I know this will definitely have some pretty stark limits.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The Consumer Council of Norway posted this on Youtube yesterday and goddammitsofuckingmuch if it doesn't describe our entire world now.
sedrosken
Florida Man
For context, the reason I'm doing this, is because I'm starting to realize having a billion computers all kicking around and taking up space is a not-amazing idea, and I'm starting to try to downsize -- I know it really doesn't look it, yet, but these smaller machines, if they work out and end up being fit-for-purpose, will let me phase out and sell or part out some of the bigger machines. I plan to try to whittle my collection down to a bare handful of desktops over the course of this year, and most of them being SFF or smaller if I can manage.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
I remember having scads of desktop systems around a dozen years ago. I realized I needed to stop collecting them about around the time I realized even my low-end systems had 12 threads. I still have more systems sitting around than I use with any regularity, but I'm down to actively using only four systems at home and the rest are shut off unless they're doing something.